This lockdown is nothing like the last one.

Then we found ourselves basking in the spring sunshine and embracing our civic duty. Those of us lucky enough to have gardens weeded and pruned and mowed and painted our fences and sheds. We cleaned, cleansed and reorganised our lives and our cutlery drawers. We enthusiastically threw ourselves at home schooling and the Joe Wickes workout. On Thursdays we took to the streets, clapping for the keyworkers who bravely provided us with healthcare, food and hygiene solutions.

Now, nearly a year on, we are bored, tired and overwhelmed. Instead of embracing our isolation we just sigh or argue and post cynical memes and comments on social media. It doesn’t have to be that way though.

There is a simple, effective, therapeutic and enjoyable thing we could all do to while away this time we are spending in suspended animation.

Memories are made of this

We could write our memoires.

Bear with me. It might sound a bit extreme. We may think we don’t have much to write. Perhaps we feel that our life has been uneventful or even just plain dull. But we all have memories that we have made and that are surprisingly unique to us. And now would be a perfect time to capture them.

Writing your own memoires doesn’t have to start at birth and painfully and chronologically make its way through your life to date. It can take many shapes and forms and as it’s unique to you there can be no right or wrong way to do it.

Just use bullet points

Perhaps you hated creative writing at school and lived-in dread of being given an essay to write? It doesn’t matter. Nobody is going to judge your grammar or sentence structure. It’s just a case of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and bashing out things that have happened to you. Your version of events.

You don’t even need to write in complete sentences. You could use a series of bullet points to note things down.

Homes, decades, jobs

Maybe you are somebody who has lived in lots of different places or has moved home a lot? Why not start with one of your addresses and jot down everything you remember about living in that house or place? What was the décor like? How did your bedroom feel? Did you have neighbours? What were their names and what did they do?

Or try a different tack and start with different decades of your life. What do you remember about being ten? What about when you were 20? I have dozens of short paragraphs that I once wrote for this exercise at a creative writing class I attended in London. It was surprising just how much I could remember from each decade. Especially bearing in mind that some were such a long time ago!

As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless. Your memories from different jobs; your ten best meals (where did you eat them/who cooked them/who else was there?); if you’re a sports fan then what about matches or events you have attended? Or the best games you’ve seen on television? Try to dredge deep into your mind to remember everything you can about them and don’t neglect how you felt – that’s probably the most important thing as it’s totally unique to you.

Desert Island Discs

Holidays are another rich vein of memories but there probably isn’t much to rival music for emotive recollections. Pretend you’re a celebrity who has been invited onto Desert Island Discs and pick the ten pieces of music you would take with you. What would they be – and why? What feelings do they evoke? Music can often transport you straight back to the time and the place where you first listened to them so put on your playlist and write as you listen.

This is all a bit of harmless and time-filling fun but it also has a serious side. However insignificant you feel, you are part of social history and your memories are important.

Housewife, 49

In 1937 the Mass-Observation Project was set up to record the voice of ordinary people. Volunteer observers were asked to report to them and to send in accounts of their lives. The diary of one of the contributors was eventually made into a TV drama starring Victoria Wood. It details the seemingly ordinary life of Nella Last, a wife and mother living in the northern town of Barrow-in-Furness. Even the title of the drama, Housewife 49, screams ordinary. And yet it was a riveting social commentary on the life and times of Nella as she struggled with her emotions and her buttoned up husband during the Second World War.

Imagine how interested future generations of your family would be to find out what was important to you and to discover how you lived or what you were like as a child or a young person? Especially as our environment is likely to change beyond all recognition because of our current predicament.

What’s your auntie called?

I consider myself to be lucky in that my own parents often spoke about their childhoods and readily shared their memories. We once even visited the woman who became my mum’s temporary guardian when she was evacuated during the War. I always felt this was normal but now I visit bereaved families and realise that adult children have no idea what music their parents might have liked, let alone where they went to school. Some barely even know the names of their parents’ siblings.

That’s not the only beneficial reason to start writing and remembering though. Recalling your accomplishments or happy times you have experienced has a positive effect on your mental health

So if you find yourself with some time on your hands, why not have a try at recalling some of your precious memories and recording them for posterity?

Engage with a ghostwriter

And if you do have a story that you would like to tell, then check out my website and writing services as I would love to help you ghost write your memoires.